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UNESCO - The Slave Route

The Slave Route, UNESCO -Division of Intercultural Projects, 1, rue Miollis - 75732 Paris Cedex 15 France

At the proposal of Haiti and someAfrican countries, the General Conference of UNESCO approved at its 27thSession in 1993 the implementation of the "The Slave Route" Project(Resolution 27 C/3.13). The project was officially launched during the FirstSession of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route inSeptember 1994 in Ouidah (Benin), one of the former pivots of the Slave trade inthe Gulf of Guinea. The official documents of Ouidah were brought out in bookform by UNESCO Publishing in 1998 under the title "From Chains to Bonds:the Slave Trade Revisited".
The idea of a "Route"expresses the dynamics of the movement of peoples, civilizations and cultures,while that of "slave" addresses not only the universal phenomenon ofslavery, but also in a more precise and explicit way the transatlantic slavetrade in the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean.
The Slave Route Project has a double objective: on the one hand it aims to break a silence and makeuniversally known the subject of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery inthe Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, with its causes and modalities, by means ofscientific work. On the other hand, it aims to emphasize, in an objective wayits consequences, especially the interactions between the peoples concerned inEurope, Africa and the Caribbean.
Foreword Federico Mayor
Introduction Doudou Diene
Who was responsible? Elikia M'Bokolo
Slave Route archives Howard Dodson
Latin America and the Caribbean Luz-Maria Martinez-Montiel
Slave trade and identity Hugo Tolentino Dipp
Slave trade and development Claude Meillassoux
Ideology, philosophy, thought Louis Molins